Marie Brennan's Blog, page 199

things I have forgotten

Dynamics.

Oh, I remember what they are. Pianissimo, piano, mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, etc. But what do they sound like? How quiet is mezzo-piano? How much louder than that is mezzo-forte?

I know this is a matter of interpretation, not actual decibels. But I've lost my sense of proportion for such things. And it's even more complicated when you're playing a digital piano: this thing has a volume knob and you can adjust the touch, so what constitutes quiet vs. loud depends not only on what I do with my hands, but what settings I've got the instrument on. It's going to take me a while before I re-develop my feel for the dynamics of the pieces I've been playing.

Also, I should mention in passing that I didn't realize how accustomed I was to playing pieces out of instructional books until I started playing lots of new-to-me music that doesn't have suggested fingerings marked on the page. <g> Howard Shore is a particular challenge on that front, or rather whoever arranged the Lord of the Rings score for piano is.

But I've had the Precious for nearly a month now, and I've played it virtually every day (barring when I was in Boston this past weekend -- and even then, I managed to play a different piano one afternoon), so I think it's safe to say that I'll get plenty of practice in the months and years to come. :-)

Lies and Prophecy

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and prophecy.

Kim thought majoring in divination would prepare her for the future. But even with her foresight warning her of trouble, she's taken by surprise when an unknown force attacks Julian, her enigmatic classmate and friend. Her gifts can't protect him against further attacks and an inexplicable string of disappearances . . . and if she's reading the omens right, Julian isn't the only one in danger.

Kim knows she isn't ready for this. But if she wants to save Julian -- and herself -- she'll have to prove her own prophecies wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present my Book View Cafe debut?

Lies and Prophecy is, as anyone who has been reading the "Welcome to Welton" scenes will know, an urban fantasy set in a version of our world where about half the adult population has active psychic gifts. (At least, "urban fantasy" is the short description for it. I have sometimes been known to refer to this book as "near future alternate history mildly post-apocalyptic semi-YA urban fantasy with some mystery and romance in and maybe a smidge of science fiction if you squint right." But they don't really have a category for that.)

It is also available for purchase! You can buy directly from BVC, in both epub and mobi formats, suitable for iPads and Nooks and Kindles and so on, or whatever your e-book reading device of choice may be. BVC is the best route to go, in terms of benefit to me-the-writer, but if you prefer to order from some other venue, you can get it through Amazon right now, and other e-book retailers in the near future. If you prefer a dead tree edition, there will be one of those, too, but that (alas) is going to take a little while longer to happen. I'll definitely announce it here when that becomes available, though, probably with pictures of me hugging it and squeezing it and generally acting like Gollum.

See, this is the first novel I ever finished. It's been through more revisions than I can count, over a period of (yikes) thirteen years, but it is still my first, and that means it is very near and dear to my heart. These are the characters that never quite left my head, the story I kept revisiting and refining. And now it is, at last, out there for other people to read. I am more happy than I can say, and I'd like to take a moment to thank the BVC crew in general, and those who produced this book in particular: my cover designer Amy Sterling Casil, my formatter Chris Dolley, my copy-editor David Levine, and most especially Sherwood Smith, who has been my BVC mentor since I first approached her at a con and said "I think I'd like to join your group."

I'll have more to say in upcoming days, but for now, I hope you enjoy the book. :-)

I am an aunt!

Directly, that is, as opposed to by marriage. (I have been an aunt-by-marriage for about two years now.)

A multitude of congratulations to my brother and his wife on the birth of their son.

Welcome to Welton: Kim (11/11)

Earle’s dining hall was a low and sprawling place, claustrophobic enough that I’d avoided it until now. I preferred Hurst, whose floor-to-ceiling windows made it feel more open and pleasant. But Liesel had recruited me for a social project tonight, and it wouldn’t kill me to eat here once, before I swore off it for the rest of my undergraduate life.

The space didn’t make it easy to find people, though. Liesel rose up on her toes to scan the room, then dropped down and shrugged. “I don’t see him. Let’s get food, then try to grab a table.”

Read the rest at the Book View Cafe.

And that's the last of them! But tune in tomorrow for an announcement . . . .

Welcome to Welton: Liesel (10/11)

Liesel could tell, even before she settled into her seat for the Cairo Accords lecture, that the guy who always sat next to her had something he wanted to say. No empathy needed; she could read it in his posture, much more upright than his usual slouch, and the way he kept looking at her sidelong. But she’d been delayed on her way to class by a call from her mother, and there was no time for him to say anything before Professor Banerjee brought up the display and began lecturing.

She hoped he wasn’t going to ask her out. Robert wasn’t the type of guy who interested her—and besides, Michele’s flirting had continued well after Carmen stopped eating lunch with them. They’d gotten together the previous night to talk about the possibility of forming a Wiccan circle, if they could find enough other students they wanted to include, but the conversation had continued for a good hour and a half after that, long after Liesel should have gone home.

Read the rest at the Book View Cafe.

One more to go! That will show up on Monday. And then regular blogging will resume, I promise.

Welcome to Welton: Kim (9/11)

A bout of shivering seized me, and my jaw ached as I clenched it to keep my teeth from chattering. Minnesota was not Georgia: I knew that, and yet here I was, soaking wet and outside late on a windy and none-too-warm night. All because I couldn’t let go of tradition.

It started when I was twelve. My gifts had manifested about a month earlier, and were still volatile enough that, although I’d enjoyed my birthday party, I felt twitchy and less than fully in control of myself. After my friends left, I went for a swim in our backyard pool, and ended up floating there for a good hour, thinking about everything in my life: manifestation, how I’d changed, where I was going. The next year, although I didn’t need the calming, I decided to to do it again. And every year since then, the same.

Read the rest at Book View Cafe.

I'm going out of town tomorrow morning, so it's possible I won't remember to post the link to the penultimate scene before I leave. But by now I figure you all know the drill, right?

Welcome to Welton: Robert (8/11)

Everyone knew the urban legends, of course. The freshman empath who snapped under the pressure of her roommate’s stress and, depending on the narrative variant, either drove the offender mad in a sudden burst of telepathic fury, or bashed her head in with a paperweight. According to the empath who sat next to Robert in their class on the Cairo Accords, there was no true historical incident behind the tales . . . but college was trying enough, and the psychic control of most eighteen-year-olds still imperfect enough, that breakdowns of a less violent sort did indeed occur.

Robert—who knew quite well that he had the empathic sensitivity of a whelk—did not expect to have any such difficulties himself.

But as it transpired, empathy was unnecessary, when living with a highly-stressed wilder.

Read the rest at Book View Cafe.

Welcome to Welton: Kim (7/11)

Several dozen of my fellow freshmen had shown up to the first meeting of the Div Club. A month and a half into the quarter, that number had dropped sharply. We might not be as dangerous as the pyros, but we weren’t as exciting, either.

At least, to anybody who wasn’t a hard-core divination geek. People still showed to the occasional meeting, and Akila told me they got lots of messages from students wanting to set up individual readings, but when it came to regular attendance, there were only maybe thirty of us—freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

When I mentioned that to Liesel, she just grinned and said, “Thirty of you, eh?”

Read the rest at Book View Cafe.

This is the scene for which I had to invent a new form of cartomancy, very late one night, because I didn't want to use tarot. Hopefully it's at least vaguely plausible?

update on the Togashi Dynasty

I just sent in a draft of my L5R chapter, after beating my head bloody against it for the last week or so. Note to self: when estimating the amount of work involved in writing a chapter for a game book, word count on its own is not an adequate metric. This is not, repeat, not like writing fiction. It's more like writing your undergraduate thesis.

I even have a bibliography. 4th edition books consulted in the writing of this chapter: core, Emerald Empire, Enemies of the Empire, Great Clans, Imperial Histories, Book of Air. Books consulted from previous editions: Way of the Dragon, Creatures of Rokugan, Legend of the Burning Sands. Also the L5R wiki. 4th edition books not consulted: Strongholds of the Empire. (And Second City, but that's because my gaming store doesn't have it in yet. Otherwise you bet your ass I'd have been eagerly looking up just what an Isawa Archaeologist does.)

Now I think I need to go feed myself and maybe drool at the TV for a little bit while I wait for my brain to regrow. I need it for some of these other projects whose deadlines are breathing down my neck . . . .

Welcome to Welton: Liesel (6/11)

“So, have any of you managed to spot him yet?” Carmen asked, sliding into the last chair at the lunch table.

Liesel shoved a forkful of salad in her mouth to keep from sighing. She liked Michele, a French student she’d met through the International Students’ Union. She liked one of Michele’s two roommates, Sara, who was sitting next to her. But Carmen . . . .

“Spot who?” Sara asked.

Read the rest at Book View Cafe.

And if you missed last week's posts, you can read the first five scenes here.